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Al Cross | Another horse race

By Al Cross The Courier-Journal
12:11 a.m. EDT May 4, 2014

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Ky. walks toward the Senate floor on Capitol Hill in Washington, Monday, Dec. 31, 2012. McConnell said Monday that he and the White House have agreed on preventing tax hikes that the "fiscal cliff" will trigger after midnight. And he says they are very close to an overall deal that would also prevent budget-wide spending cuts. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)(Photo: Susan Walsh, AP)

For more than 30 years, the proprietors of this column have used the Derby Sunday edition to give Churchill Downs visitors and locals an update on our state's usually interesting and sometimes nationally significant politics. The advent of digital media may make that seem old-fashioned, as most "Derby visitors" are now probably virtual, but this year marks the first time we can say without much fear of contradiction that Kentucky is having the nation's most important election — one that could also be its most expensive, except for recent races for president.

And while the fate of Republican U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell has drawn even international interest, Kentucky has other pols of national note, and some interesting wannabes to watch.

McConnell's race with Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes, which has already started as they dismiss their May 20 primary foes, is the country's most important because he is the Senate minority leader and will almost surely be majority leader if Republicans take control of the Senate — which they have a slightly better than even chance of doing, but not if McConnell loses.

It may seem ironic that the Senate GOP leader is the only Republican incumbent who is thought to be at risk of defeat this fall, but there is some logic to that.

McConnell, minority leader since late 2006, has more national prominence than any Kentucky politician since Alben W. Barkley of Paducah was Senate Democratic leader in 1937-48 and vice president in 1949-53. That has helped him in a state that has a bit of an inferiority complex and likes to see Kentuckians do well on the national stage, but it has begun to work against McConnell because he has been around a long time and has become a leading symbol of Washington's partisan gridlock.

To be sure, it was McConnell who worked with Vice President Joe Biden, his former Senate colleague, to reach rational compromises that ended and avoided government shutdowns. But McConnell was an author, perhaps the chief author, of the GOP strategy to limit President Barack Obama to one term — a fierce resistance that, when combined with some congressional Republicans' hatred or near-hatred of the president, solidified the notion that D.C. stands for Dysfunctional Capital.

Obama is decidedly unpopular in Kentucky, so McConnell has made him, not Grimes, his chief target. Grimes, the Kentucky secretary of state, is subtly running against Obama, too — by attacking Washington, with McConnell, not the president, as its symbol. Beyond that, she has said little, apparently fearing any minor slip that McConnell's molehill-into-mountain machine could use against her, but raising doubts about her ability to oust one of America's most cunning strategists and tacticians.

Polls have shown the race about even, but McConnell remains the marginal favorite, partly because Supreme Court decisions have opened the gates for a river of political money that is likely to be mostly Republican. Outside groups have already spent almost $3.7 million on the race and could spend 10 times that much.

While polls show a neck-and-neck race, they likely overestimate the Democratic vote, which is hurt by low turnout in non-presidential federal elections — especially in states like Kentucky, where Obama has been bad for the Democratic brand. But McConnell may have his own turnout problem.

The senator wasn't able to achieve his initial prime directive of avoiding a primary, but he lucked out by drawing an amateur — Matt Bevin, a Louisville businessman who has provided easy ammunition for attack ads: a misleading educational reference on social media; his signature on a business filing that endorsed the Wall Street bailout, which he railed against as a candidate; and speaking to a pro-cockfighting rally, then falsely claiming he didn't know its purpose. Three strikes, and he is all but out.

But Bevin remains an important factor because he has money, is supported by some tea party groups and is the only significant primary foe McConnell has ever faced. Many Kentucky Republicans have never warmed up to the senator, for a variety of reasons, but they've never had a credible alternative in a primary. Some of those anti-McConnell voters who choose Bevin won't bother to vote for the senator in November. The biggest question in the race is how many such voters there will be, so McConnell is savaging Bevin with attack ads, probably hoping to beat him by a ratio of at least 2 to 1.

The McConnell camp argues that anti-McConnell Republicans will come home in the fall. In 2010, after Rand Paul beat McConnell protégé Trey Grayson in the primary for the other Senate seat, 43 percent of Republicans in a poll said they wouldn't vote for Paul in the general election, but an exit poll in that election showed 91 percent of Republicans voted for Paul.

There are pitfalls in that argument: First, Paul had been attacked as an unacceptable nominee, and voters on the losing side in a primary can be slow to warm up for the general election. Second, the exit poll only surveyed voters; we don't know how many Grayson supporters didn't vote because they couldn't abide Paul. (Turnout was higher among Republicans than among Democrats, but that's attributable to the strong anti-Obama feeling in the state, which made many Democrats stay home.) Third, Paul was a relatively blank slate, on which he could write his own story in the fall race; McConnell is a known quantity, and voters have had 30 years to make up their minds about him.

The senator's job ratings are lousy, and he surely knows this could be his closest race since he upset Democratic incumbent Dee Huddleston in 1984 by 5,169 votes, 0.4 percent of the total, as President Ronald Reagan carried the state by 283,193.

McConnell has been fond of saying something I haven't heard from him lately: "In this business, you meet the same people on the way down that you met on the way up." The primary and general elections may tell whether he has practiced the lesson of that aphorism — don't alienate people as you rise, or your fall could be fast and rough.

McConnell has made one very important friend for this race: Paul. The junior senator is more popular than the senior one, and that shows in McConnell's coupling of himself with Paul in campaign ads, particularly mail pieces.

Paul has irked some of his tea party supporters by endorsing McConnell, but his powerful colleague has surely helped him gain entry into places where presidential candidates need to make friends and raise money. Paul is an all-but-announced candidate and is among the leaders in the early jockeying, once again making Time magazine's list of the 100 most influential Americans.

But Paul would also like to run for re-election to the Senate in 2016, and Kentucky law prohibits someone from being on the ballot for two offices at once. Paul's brain trust thinks he could get that overturned in court, but that's highly debatable.

The Republican-controlled state Senate tried to change the law, but Democrats in the House refused. However, the House is the last Democrat-controlled legislative chamber in the South, and it is very much up for grabs in the November election. So, the race for president will be influenced by Kentucky elections that are largely local — but this time may be influenced by a tide of national money.

A fully Republican legislature would surely override vetoes by Gov. Steve Beshear, not only helping Paul but probably complicating Beshear's embrace of health care reform. Kentucky is the only Southern state to expand Medicaid and run its own health-insurance exchange. The latter has been a huge success, but Republicans say the state can't afford to help pay for the newly eligible Medicaid recipients, starting at 5 percent of their cost in 2017 and rising to a cap of 10 percent in 2020.

Beshear is term-limited, but fellow Democrats have been slow to enter the race to succeed him, giving Grimes plenty of time and room to raise money. That's not just party unity; if she almost beats McConnell, she might just keep on running — for governor in 2015.

On the Republican side, the all-but-announced favorite for governor is Agriculture Commissioner James Comer, who echoes Paul's calls for a more inclusive party. They are also allies in promoting industrial hemp, an idea opposed by Republican U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. Some of his allies are lining up behind the only announced gubernatorial candidate, former Louisville Metro Council Member Hal Heiner.

While Rogers' camp fights that intraparty battle, he and Beshear have formed a bipartisan alliance to diversify the economy of Eastern Kentucky, which is suffering from a rapid loss of coal jobs. They are avoiding the blame game (such as McConnell's anti-Obama "War on Coal" theme) and looking forward and long-term. That is something Kentucky politicians usually fail to do. But they rarely fail to entertain, and for the next two years or so, the nation will be watching.

Al Cross, former C-J political writer, is director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues and associate professor in the University of Kentucky School of Journalism and Telecommunications. His opinions are his own, not UK's.